January 5, 2024

 There is a popular saying: What comes around goes around.  That has been happening and it has been difficult to see where it is leading. In my house growing up Paul McCartney and Wings was a common ambient sound in the background.  A popular listen for us was the Wings Wildlife album. The title track provides a haunting problem for those around in December of 1971 and on. The lyrics go deep and leave questions like a movie with an abrupt ending:

The word “wild” applies to the words “you” and “me”.

While taking a walk through an African park one day,

I saw a sign saying, “The animals have the right of way”.

Wildlife, whatever happened to,

Wildlife, the animals in the zoo?

We’re breathing a lot,

a lot of political nonsense in the air.

You’re making it hard for the people who live in there.

You’re moving so fast, but, baby, you know not where.

You’d better stop, there’s animals everywhere,

And man is the top, an animal too,

And, man, you just got to care.

Wild life, what ever happened to?

Whatever happened to?

There is a disintegration of life as we know it. Entire universes are disappearing and people hardly notice.  This time it is us and no one notices that the ground we stand on, the knowledge we have earned, and the foundations we have built are just fading from existence. The white noise of the internet, dropping poison digital propaganda leaflets into our path as we walk like drones to our own demise all along thinking that we have achieved something.  

I recall being 12 years old, walking down to a mom-and-pop store on North Elm St in Torrington, Connecticut, and purchasing my first New York Times.  I carried it home with great anticipation. At home, I savored every page. Today’s generation could never know.  This was so much more than just news, ads, editorials, TV and radio listings, it was alive with the pulse of the center of the universe in the 1970s. 

In the fall of 1978, I would trek miles across Torrington on foot on a crisp October morning, walk into a mom-and-pop shop 2 doors down from Dee’s Delicatessen, and pick up today’s copy of the Boston Herald American.  Then, into Dee’s, which was the hot spot for breakfast whether it was sit-down or to-go.  I would sit at that diner counter and right alongside all of those guys born in the early 1900s, I had coffee, and the paper would sing to me. Then off to school.

Yes, we knew papers were in trouble 30 years ago, that is old news. I saw a post from Jacob Ward, former Editor in Chief of Popular Science magazine.  He shared the sad news that Popular Science, in all forms was coming to an end 151 years after it began.  He pointed out that the magazine was so rich in history, such as an oil painting once existed for every single cover in past decades.  If you did not know, the covers were spectacular, sort of a Norman Rockwell meets sci-fi. 

In 2009, it was announced that Gourmet Magazine would stop publishing.  It turned the culinary world on its side, but thanks to distraction, culinary artists everywhere somehow survived. It was a shot across the bow however warning us that nothing anywhere is safe.

Isn’t it ironic that entire lives are being erased with the stroke of a computer key? No drama here, only murder.  Change is the name of the game.  We are told that we have to adapt, and well, that is nothing new to me.  Now it seems we just from one burning ship to another in the stormy waters of our self-declared achievement.

The air raid sirens have been heard in the air. Corporate business parks everywhere were constructed in the 1980s and leased before 2020 see a mighty judgment coming.  The countdown is going and time is nearly up. This is a far-reaching implosion that will leave many in its wake.  Unfortunately, investing in this type of real estate was seen as a safe place to put retirement fund money, and now it is about to be brought to nothing.  

Somewhere from those ashes, someone with cash out there will purchase these derelict structures and turn some of them into housing, but it won’t be enough. The tsunami is still coming.

The biggest demise of course is the history that we are discarding daily. We are disregarding the lives of those who came before us and heartlessly give no attention to that. I could spend a lifetime trying to explain where we were and know that no matter what, I would still fail to get it right.

What comes around, goes around. Who would have thought that we would have not only treated nature with such disregard but ourselves and the people who preceded us?